This is the beginning (not the end)
by The Readers Muse
Summary: When he found the notebook - dappled with red and lost in the straps of one of Aiden's spare packs in the back of van the next morning - he thought that was all that'd been written in it.


**Disclaimer:** I don't own AMC's The Walking Dead or any of its characters, wishful thinking aside.

**Authors Note #1:** This is inspired by Reg Monroe and Noah's conversation in 5x14 "Spend." I thought it would be interesting to examine the results of the episode from Reg's point of view after losing his son Aiden, as well as Noah – who had expressed a desire to learn Architecture and make the ASZ safer for the future.

**Warnings:** Spoilers for the episode. Follows the idea of fitting into canon as a 'missing scene' type of fic. *****Contains: mild language, mild adult content, touches on the experience of personal loss and the death of a child, references to canon character death and the desolation of the author's own feelings.

**This is the beginning (not the end)**

"_Can we start meeting in the mornings?"_

"_So I can bring you steel cut oatmeal and ask you why we're meeting?"_

"_So you can teach me how to build things."_

"_Do you wanna be an architect?"_

"_Wanna make sure those walls stay up."_

"_You think they could fall?"_

"_I think they could get knocked in. Could be years from now. Could be when I'm your age."_

"_Well, I'll still be around when you're my age."_

"_Oh, but it wouldn't hurt if I knew some of what you knew. With the walls… the houses… some new buildings."_

"_So you're in it for the long haul?"_

"_Yeah."_

* * *

When he found the notebook - dappled with red and lost in the straps of one of Aiden's spare packs in the back of van the next morning - he thought that was all that'd been written in it.

_This is the beginning._

He adjusted his glasses. Forcing himself to breathe evenly through a hitching swallow as he bent down and picked it up. Trying not to dwell on the unintended irony there as the familiar weight settled easily into his palm. He let it rest, chancing a look back towards the house as the outline of his eldest son flickered in the dirty window pane.

_Spencer hadn't let either of them out of his sight since the others had come back._

_Since Aiden hadn't-_

He shook his head. Eyes dry. He felt wrung out, stretched, like a worn out dish-rag left to air-dry in the harsh summer heat. He was aware of everything now. Things he'd never noticed. Never cared about. Never let himself dwell on considering how blessed his family had been through all this madness. Now it was as if he couldn't escape them. The brittleness of his bones as his toes flexed in his shoes. The warp of cartilage in his right knee, still twinging from when he'd sprained it trying to clear out one of the gutters above the back porch last week. The usual aches and pains he'd come to associate with being on the wrong side of fifty.

It wasn't until his thumb rasped down the corner line, whispering through the pages as the hush of the street started to weigh down on him, that he realized he was wrong. _There was more._ Noah had already started writing. Drawing. _Sketching._ Seemingly taking his words to heart as the first few pages detailed what they'd managed to talk about over breakfast.

The basics.

The materials.

The calculations that determined what struts were needed to shore up the curved rim.

And which were required to strengthen the base.

_He'd been a good student._

_Dedicated._

He wished he could say he knew him well enough that he might have even been a bright one. Someone with promise in the field. Host to a natural affinity for the beauty of a working structure. The living mathematics that had once drawn him in the same way, perhaps even at a similar age, like a fly to honey.

But they hadn't been given that time.

It had been stolen from them.

From _him._

From Noah.

From Aiden_._

From_ all_ of them.

He closed the van with little ceremony, careful to keep his movements even – controlled. Aware there was probably more than a few pairs of eyes watching. He couldn't afford to fall apart. Neither of them could. _Especially not Deanna_. She needed him to be her rock right now. He knew that. Just like he'd been there for her when she'd been sworn in. He'd made that promise right alongside her. He'd always been in it for the long haul when it had come to her, to their family.

But instead of going inside, he opened the gate into the back garden. Finding suddenly that he had no desire to shut himself inside. It was solitude he wanted. The ability to hear himself think above the suffocating weight of a family that had found themselves unprepared to deal with the gaping hole that'd taken the place of a treasured son.

_He just needed the open air._

_That was all._

He settled himself down on the bench, letting the firm of the fence support his weight as he leaned back. It wasn't until the shadow lingering behind the sitting room glass faded back into the dark of the house that he opened the book again. Feeling strangely unsteady now that there was no one around to take note of it. Enough that when he took off his glasses - polishing the lens habitually – he realized it was not the lenses that were at fault for his blurred vision.

Sometime between their talk and the start of their supply run, Noah must have found the time to start writing. Because there were words. Pages of them. Or, should he say, _names. _Pages of names that gradually turned into a loose, doodling sketch of a walled community labeled: _Shirewilt Estates_.

The crisp turn of the page detailed a breach – fresh and scorched by the coal-black of a long extinguished fire – all crumbled brick and brittle mortar that had been punched right through. He paused, tracing the deep gouges left by the pen as he examined the jagged edges.

_This was man-made. _

_This place had been taken by living hands._

_Taken. Burned out. Pillaged. Murdered. Then abandoned._

A sickening surge of emotion rose unbidden in the heart of him as he recalled their conversation - what Noah had said as he looked behind them. Dark eyes sweeping across the crowning crest of the wall as if he weren't really seeing it at all. Hesitant to say what he truly felt in a way that seemed all too familiar after raising two children of his own.

"_You think they could fall?"_

"_I think they could get knocked in."_

The hand holding the notebook shook as he re-read the final line. The last thing Noah had written, scrawled hastily and deep into the blue-lined paper before he'd set the pen aside and taken up a gun instead.

_The wolves are never far._

They were only words on a page, but they stuck with him. Haunting him for the rest of the day and long into the night. Unable to shake the growing feeling of unease as what he remembered of that morning replayed over and over in his head. Only gaining in strength when teased together with that of Noah's drawings and the implication of a very similar community, in a very similar place, whose walls had not saved them.

* * *

The next morning he got up early. He used the key only Deanna, himself and Spencer knew about to let himself into the storage room. He took an automatic rifle down from the rack and strapped a holstered nine millimeter to his belt, choosing to stick with his multi-tool rather than take one of the hunting knives, before he locked up just as quietly. He met Spencer – grim faced and red-eyed - by the front gate and together they slipped quietly into the wilds.

If the wolves were indeed coming, it was the least he could do to make sure their walls were ready for them. Starting today, he – _they_ – would walk the wall. Looking for weaknesses. Spots that could be exploited. Spots that could be shored up. Better protected.

He would do it every day for as long as he was able, teaching Spencer by example as he used every mile they walked to teach his son what he needed to know to keep this place safe. To make sure their walls remained standing. For Aiden. For Noah. For all of them. For everything they had left and more.

He wouldn't let the beginning of civilization become the end.

Personal pride or not, he just didn't have it in him to take that chance.

* * *

**A/N #1: **Thank you for reading. Please let me know what you think! Reviews and constructive critiquing are love! – This story is now complete.

**Reference:** Thank you to gunslingerdixon for the dialogue from the episode!


End file.
